2001-04-03. Bell Jar Construction
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I feel so uninspired, I feel like I can't produce an ounce of creative energy. Choked off. I used to spew out sage advice and keen insight like it was just always under the surface ready for action.

Now I feel like I've been retarded.

I think it's partly attributed to my severe lack of communication with people who inspire me. I have Alyx. I have Mike. And the few people who pop in and out of my life here in NY. But I don't feel able to let loose.

I feel trapped.

I read The Bell Jar last week. I had always wanted to read it and always felt a little A: behind for not having read it and B: cheezy for reading such typical "goth/depression" material. I still felt a little wierd.

Which I realize is just stupid, and that part of my mother in me that creeps in every once in a while concerned with how I "look" - I HATE that. My mother is obsessed with appearences. But that's a whole other entry...

But I read it and realized that I wasn't meant to read it until now. Until I was living in NY going through this shit. I understood every word she put on the page. I knew because I was feeling it in some small way. I know what it's like to feel like you're under a bell jar now. I knew in High School, too, but now I can identify it better.

As a matter of fact, the past few weeks had felt like those dismal high school days all over again. At least in the feelings crowding me. The ones that make me just lie motionless on my desk and cry...

I think it comes from a lack of free will.

I'm a Sagittarius. I crave my freedom. I need to have the ability to just *go*. I don't feel that now.

Alyx is also a Sag, so I know he understands and I know he's feeling it, too. Maybe that's what's making our struggle so difficult for us. We want to just get out of here. And we can't. And we hate it.

In high school it was the feeling that my life was not mine to live. Like it was my parents to control. Now I fought this (as I'm sure you guessed) every step of the way. My parents (both Scorpios...surprise, surprise), as most parents do, wanted me to be their image of the perfect daughter. And I was blessed/cursed with enough of that image to make them think that I was just a mutation of some sort. That since I was smart and nice and polite and talented and driven and somewhat pretty that I must also dress how the see it, and choose which talents to honor as they see it, and of course, have the friends/boyfriends that they think are "worthy" of me.

They just didn't stop to understand me. Or even try to... And being that I had/have so much of that "good daughter" in me. I try to reach out to them and do so much of what they want and make them understand and make them a part of my life that I get burned. Badly. A lot.

My friends and lovers have always gotten on me for trying too hard to include my parents in my life. They point out how they just use it to hurt me, whether it's intentional or not.

I'm not sure where I was going with this...

Sometimes, due to Alyx's past history of hardship, I'll bitch about my parents or something, anything, whatever, and he'll give me that "you don't even know" kind of thing.

Quick detour to explain:

His father - abusive. Mother died when he was in high school. Left home at like 16, got his AA on his own and has seen his father twice in 10 years. Once to make a fool of him in the middle on church for hitting his little sister, and once at his older sisters wedding (...middle child...)There's a lot of shit there. See the movie Trust. Supposedly, that *is* his father - his sister agrees. And it has amazing descriptions of what *love* is..."respect, admiration and trust = love". good stuff...

SO! He gives me that look or comment, and I feel like a jerk, because my parents are really more supportive and understanding now(they've come a long way). But I think what he and my friends never realize is that it's much EASIER to leave. To sever. To keep them away. Make it a nonissue. That's what they all did to some extent. It doesn't erase the pain and damage they've done, but you can move on, not worry about it. I live with trying to make that relationship work. Which is always harder.

Break up?

Stay together and work it out?

Which is harder really?

Because that's what I do. I'm always the one who tries and fix things. I'm so sick of it sometimes...

But *they* don't know what it's like to move like we did. To be the "freak" in so many ways at so many schools. Shall you call me Alice and leave me to play croquet with the queen? How can I play the game if the rules keep changing? (Alyx wrote that)

All I had sometimes was my family. And to feel like you don't belong anywhere in it makes it even harder. My sister understands a bit. But she got to anchor (pardon the pun - Navy dad) down in Florida for 8 years. So even she makes me feel like a freak sometimes. But she's the closest one to understanding how it feels and how it's been and I love her so much for that...

And Alyx understands in a way, too. Not just because of similarities of experience, but due to his uncanny insight into me. It makes me shudder sometimes...

I should go back to jail - I mean work...